An unexpected friendship
by KyraKitty
Summary: Sanji and Chopper find they have more in common than they expected. -Chapter Four Uploaded-
1. Unveiling

**Notes:** Obviously, I don't own these characters or this series. Oda does. Also, this is meant to be a sort of a sequel to my previous One Piece fanfic, Seven Steps. I'm likely to do some slashy stuff later. I had the idea for this while formulating former fanfic, but found it didn't really fit in with Seven Steps. This is just me fooling around, mostly, though I'd like for this work to be of quality. For those who reviewed Seven Steps, thanks a bunch. I'm glad for the comments! And I'd love to get some critique on this. I know I have a long way to go before I'm a good writer, and I'd like to someday become something along those lines. And, without further blathering, enjoy!

Sanji held his head in pain. He pulled his hand down and saw it covered in blood. The blood wasn't a surprise, he could feel it run down his face, over an eye already covered by hair. He staggered back to the ship. One, maybe two ribs were broken, and he was cut to hell. Why were there two swordsmen? This was what Zoro did, not him. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a cigarette dripping with blood. He looked down his nose at it.

Well, fuck. Best make it to the ship faster. He had some _dry_ cigarettes there.

After what seemed like an eternity, he saw the familiar sheep head that meant he was home. He made his way onto the ship, stumbling around a bit as his vision was starting to fail. He was trailing a river of blood behind him. Maybe the muscle-head could loose blood like that, but Sanji wasn't quite used to it. At the sight of his room he quickened pace. The sooner he got his tobacco the better.

Then all of a sudden he was catching himself from a fall. He heard a crack and collapsed on the ground. He sat up and saw some of Usopp's tools lying on the ground. That thoughtless dick. He looked at his ankle, the source of the crack. He tried to move his foot. It hurt. A lot.

"Son of a bitch," he said under his breath. In a shuffle of boots and blood he was on his feet again. Limping his way to his precious cigarettes he heard a shriek of terror. His headache flared.

"Aaaaahhhh! Sanji! What happened?! Ahhh!! You're bleeding!" screamed a startled little reindeer, pulling things out of a blue sack as he ran towards the sagging man.

"Hey, I'll be fine," the man said as he still made his painful way to his bunk, "I just need some cigarettes."

"B-but your ankle's broken! You can't walk on that! Sit down! You'll make it worse!"

Sanji ignored the doctor's pleas until he was finally by his shelves, grabbing a cigarette from a disorderly pile. Then he plopped down in his hammock, a pool of blood underneath him. With cigarette in mouth, he cupped his hands around a small flame until the smell of smoke was around him. He sighed in relief before he took a long drag. He lay there while Chopper yelled about how terrible this cut was, and that break, getting out his supplies and starting by bandaging his ankle. The cook drowned him out, pulling his cigarette from his mouth to exhale, more than a little pain stabbing him in the ribs.

"A-ah! Sanji! Sit up! Your ribs!" Chopper pleaded, his arms flailing a bit with bandages in hand.

The blonde sat up and started unbuttoning his bloody rag of a shirt, revealing his thin, pale frame. As soon as the clothing dropped to the ground a large, red bruise made itself visible under the trailing blood. The fat, purple lines defined three ribs, turning in angles that weren't quite right. He held his breath as the panicking doctor dressed the bruise. Then, once a bandage was wrapped around his torso, he breathed out sharply, smoke filling the room. It hurt to breath, but he had suffered worse.

Sanji paid half attention to anything that wasn't his cigarette as Chopper was quick to clean his cuts. That is, until Chopper took note of his head wound. As Chopper reached up to brush his hair aside, Sanji caught his hand.

"It'll be fine," Sanji said, Chopper's eyes wide with sheer fear.

"Aahh! I'm sorry! But you're hurt! I have to help you or you'll keep losing more blood! It's dangerous!" Chopper seemed to cry.

Sanji stared at the boy in front of him, his gaze calculating. The reindeer's arm remained in Sanji's grip, but he didn't try to move it. Chopper stared at him in wonder and waited for his next words, his eyes larger than Sanji thought possible. After what seemed an eternity to both, Sanji spoke.

"Fine, whatever," Chopper's arm was released.

Hooves slid hair aside and a damp washcloth wiped of the blood drenching his face. Sanji kept his eye closed as Chopper found the actual wound in the sea of red. He had to peel hair jammed into the laceration away. A bright red, bleeding circle was over half of his eyebrow, and a discomforting purple bruise ringed that. The doctor could tell that something blunt had hit him with ferocity.

"Sword hilt," the wounded said, seeming to sense Chopper's curiosity, "There were two swordsmen, and Zoro seemed busy enough with one. As far as I know, he's still fighting the bastard out there somewhere."

Chopper nodded in understanding, his eyes almost as wide as when Sanji held his wrist. The lump on his forehead was massive, and dangerously close to his eye. It might have damaged his actual eye!

"Ahh! Your eye!" Chopper yelled, startled by his own deduction, "Open your eye!"

The man stared at him in apprehension. He knew what Chopper was looking for, and he knew what he would find.

"It's fine," he said in a tone quieter than both of them expected.

"B-but I need to see it!" he started stammering.

Again Sanji stared at Chopper, calculating, deciding how far he would let the walking panic attack go. Again Chopper looked on the verge of weeping. Slowly Sanji's closed eye opened to reveal an eye missing a pupil with a milky film over the blue of it. Chopper gasped most audibly, and in an instant understood that it didn't matter if he eye was damaged now.


	2. Freak

"W-what happened?" a reindeer stammered, his voice louder than it should have been.

"Nothing," a blond replied, his voice calmer than it should have been.

"B-but your eye! How did this happen?"

"It didn't."

A stream of smoke slid out of Sanji's lips, almost seductive in how smooth it was. It was cool, casual. He was cool, casual. Or at least he seemed to be. He body relaxed, his gaze no where in particular. Until you noticed his hand shaking a little, his breath overly even, concentrated, his eyes staring at something, the gears in his head almost visibly working. His lips quivered as he tried to breath the smoke from his lungs evenly. Then he started to pull the cigarette back to his lips and he breathed in jaggedly for a second. Quick and hard and uneven. And it hurt. Fucking ribs.

"How can this not have happened?" Chopper screamed, not lending confusion to quiet thought, "Something happened to your eye!"

"No, nothing happened," Sanji said, his voice betraying his anger at the situation, "There is no reason. There never was."

Chopper looked onward in utter confusion. He didn't understand the meaning behind Sanji's words. The context of memories long past. He still didn't know how Sanji's eye had gotten like that. He was at a loss for words, and merely stared at his patient in awe. His jaw dropped, his eyes wide, gibberish rolling out of his mouth.

"But what? How? This isn't... I don't... Huh?" he was very loud about being speechless.

Blood ran down Sanji's face, onto his eyelashes and pooled there. He blinked and it continued its path down his cheek. The cleaning Chopper had done was for naught. When his eye opened again, it could be seen that a drop had made it into his eye itself. The edge of his eye was ringed in red, and a thin veil of blood was smeared across the white and milky blue. It was not a pleasant sight.

"Chopper," he said, ignoring the blood dripping down his face, "it doesn't matter. This is how my eye's been since I was born. I was always like this." And then, almost like an afterthought, a voice low and filled with contempt, "I've always been a freak."

Chopper gasped as a sharp pang of emotion hit him. Freak. He knew everything that word meant. To be rejected, excluded, ridiculed, loathed. He knew how much it hurt for those around you to hate you because you're deformed, abnormal. He knew how it felt to realize that part of you shouldn't be. That you aren't right. Tears welled up in the reindeer's eyes and his signature blue nose started to run. He was overcome with emotions, with understanding. He knew what it meant to be a freak.

"Oi, oi!" the bloodied man started saying, "don't cry about it, alright?"

Sanji suddenly felt a new level of awkward and embarrassed as the tiny ball of cute clung to him crying and wailing out phrases like, "I'm so sorry!" and "That's so sad!".

"Oi, it's okay, alright?" Sanji said as he patted Chopper on the back, trying to ignore the distinct pain of an antler against broken ribs, "No one knows anyway, okay?"

Sanji looked a little confused, himself as he tried his best to comfort his companion, though a moment ago it almost seemed like he needed the comforting. He had never really known how to deal with Chopper's outbursts until he had spent nearly two months with him and him alone.

"I'm alright, okay?" he said again, his voice warmer than usual, almost patronizing, "So stop crying, alright?"

Chopper backed away and sniffed. He tried to stop crying and wore a sheepish smile. With tears still pouring from his eyes, Chopper managed to push a response from his throat, lumps in it and all.

"Alright."

"And look," Sanji said, pointing to his bleeding brow, wearing a small smirk, "you still have to patch me up, alright?"

Chopper nodded and suddenly felt very good about being helpful. A melancholic grin was across his face, and he agreed, he had to help his friend.

"Alright!"

The tiny doctor almost jumped at the chance to help his friend as Sanji leaned over to him. He'd been through a lot with this crew, and out of all of them, he learned to trust this spazz. This little furball who had stood there clutching him while he wept. He never meant to be so close to this rag-tag crew, this cast of hopeless dreams that they were sure to make come true, but he had made a friend of the doctor who was scared of everything. It made him happy to think that Chopper wasn't crying about him. He didn't want anyone to cry over him. And it made Chopper happy to know that he was helping patch him up, make him feel better. So, with blood and pain and smoke filling the room, they both smiled, and they both meant it.


	3. Past

**Notes:** Wee! Another chapter. This one was actually giving me some trouble. Writer's block and all. This is all warm and squishy, too, though I don't think I like this chapter very much. Thanks to Sherridan an mushi-azn for their comments. Thank you! X3 There should be more story to come. And I might upload this again as I'm currently being forced to use a computer missing the most vital, (Bum, bum, bum) Microsoft Word. Sooooooooo, this is all rough. And I _know_ we're not supposed to upload hot off the press stuff, but nuts to that. I'll edit it later once I re-read it if I see any problems. Sooo... enjoy! And like always, please R&R!

Once Chopper was done fixing his companion up, an awkward silence filled the room and clung to the air. Chopper stared at the man who had once tried to cook him, the man who could protect him more than he could heal in return, the man who had put himself in Chopper's care, who had trusted his life to Chopper. Sanji stared back. What was there to say? What could Chopper ask?

Oh, what Chopper wanted to ask. What he wanted to say. He wanted to know what it was like, how Sanji felt, when Sanji started to hide his shame. He wanted to tell him he knew how he felt, how it was to be a freak, how it was to be rejcted. He-he almost wanted to comfort and protect him. He felt emotions and sympathy like he had never felt, and he didnt know more than Sanji's contempt for his own eye. But he couldn't ask any of those things, couldn't bring himself to speak a word of the pain he knew. What would Sanji think if he said anything? What would he feel? What if he hated Chopper for it? What if he lost one of the few friends he had.

Sanji stared back at him, his hair pushed behind his ear haphazardly, a few strands falling away to their usual resting place. His eye could be seen, staring without seeing, at the boy, below bandages and an eyebrow without a curl. The reindeer was sweating and nervous, with an awkward, afraid look in his eyes. Of course Chopper was afraid of him. His eye wasn't something people wanted to look at. It wasn't something that put people's minds at ease. It was freakish and grotesque and disgusting, and he was freakish and grotesque and disgusting. It was something to hate, something to turn away from. It was something to fear. He shouldn't have let Chopper see. Shouldn't have showed him. Shouldn't have trusted him.

"I'm sorry," he said almost awkwardly, "you shouldn't have had to see it. What if we just try to forget this whole thing, okay?" He wished they would forget, even though he knew Chopper couldn't.

"N-no!" Chopper jumped, "I-I..." His words were lost and he tried to put together his thoughts. With a major leap of courage, he spoke again, "I'm glad. To have someone else who knows how it feels to... to be a freak." His voice was choked and pushed out of his throat though all of his being wanted him to stay silent.

Sanji's eyes grew wide for a second at his words. Yes, he was a freak. Even Chopper knew it, but wasn't Chopper a freak himself? Of course he was! The reindeer on two legs who talks! And then Sanji started laughing. He laughed hard as he had to keep gasping for more breath. He laughed so hard he nearly cried, the pain from his ribs tearing through his whole body, but he kept laughing. He laughed and laughed until Chopper started laughing with him. They laughed until they were on the floor, laying there, tears pouring down their faces, sides held in the most pleasant pain possible. And then they kept laughing.

Once the guffaws and snickers died down, Sanji laid next to the most curious of their crew, his arms behind his head.

"They used to say I was possessed," he said, staring at the ceiling. He didn't know why he was telling this to Chopper. Maybe it was just having someone, anyone to tell it to.

"They said I was possessed, " he went on, "so I started to brush my hair over it. I could never see out of it anyway. But they all knew what was underneath it. They always knew, and they woud always hate me. Then these sea chefs stopped into town. Apparently they had to restock. That's when I knew I had to be a cook. That was always something I could do well. I cooked, and I put myself in my cooking. And it didn't matter that I couldn't see half of what anyone else could see. I could taste more than anyone could. So I left. I was with people who didn't know what I was. I was a sea chef for a long time, until, well... I was a sea chef for a long time."

As he spoke the pain of the memories could almost be seen pour from his mouth. It was a near tanglible feeling of sadness and nostalgia that filled the room. Chopper found himself sniffling at Sanji's simple story. He thought about what Sanji had been through, and it made all of his memories wash up to him.

"Your parents let you leave?" Chopper asked, the sympathetic sorrow in his voice thick, but he had to know more. He had to drink up this knowledge as quick as he could. He had to understand his friend, and how he felt. He felt like he had to know everything about him.

"My parents..." Sanji trailed off, his voice tainted by loathing, "my parents were glad to see me go. They never wanted me..."

Suddenly the blond felt a soft furry face against his side, tiny arms wrapped around him tight. He let his breath be knocked out of him wth a soft, "Ooof!"

"Sanji!" the creature clinging to him wailed, "I'm sorry, Sanji! I know how you feel!!! But I want you, Sanji!! You're my friend and I want you!!"

Sanji chuckled a little as tears rolled down his cheek. All of a sudden Chopper reminded him of the only other person who had seen what he was and accepted him for it and he cried against the oversized hat of their doctor.

"You're my friend, too, Chopper, and I want you."


	4. Venom

**Notes:** Whew, so, yeah, been a while since I updated. I actually had some pretty severe writer's block this time, then my friend helped me. I was thinking of making Zoro walk in, but I think this is much better. It's really short, but I'm tired, so poo on that. I'll write more as soon as I can. Again, Read and Review, please, and you shall be loved.

They lay there for a long time. Sanji had one arm around a small reindeer who seemed to cling tightly to the cook for dear life. They had finished with their abrupt sobs, and all that remained were mixed emotions and eyes that felt too heavy. Sanji looked at the boy under his arm. By Chopper's relaxed expression and soft breathing, he guessed he was asleep. It must be tiring to over-react so much. He almost smiled, but that felt wrong. He shouldn't find happiness and friendship after what Chopper saw. He shouldn't have _cried_.

He looked down at the reindeer again. When he was asleep, it looked a little like he was smiling. Sanji almost grinned at this, and squeezed Chopper just a little tighter. In response, Chopper adjusted in his sleep, nuzzling closer to the source of warmth he was so pleasantly grasping. He watched the slumbering doctor and felt something rise in him. It was a feeling he didn't get very often, but he knew he could place in a moment. He had a near uncontrollable urge to take Chopper into a tight hug and just squeeze and squeeze until the feeling died down. He wanted to run his hand across his back and scratch him behind the ear. He wanted to hold him close to him and kiss his forehead. He knew the feeling. It was because Chopper was cute. Chopper was just too damn cute, and, having spent such a bonding experience with him, odd as it may have been, he felt more attached to this loaf of adorability than he expected.

He smirked at this and lay his head back against the floor again, ready to fall asleep himself when a door being slammed open jarred them both to sit up.

"Hoo-hoon!" a young man crowed, "That snake guy was so cool! Sanji, Did you see him?"

The young man wore an excited grin under a straw-hat. His breathing was heavy enough so that his entire chest puffing up and back down could be seen. He stood firm with fists clenched tight, in a way that made him almost look like a sumo.

"You mean Lani?" the blonde asked, leisurely pulling a cigarette from the shelf an arms length away.

"Yeah! That guy!" Luffy responded, with a fast nod and a wider grin, "He was tough!"

The last remark rang true as Sanji could see a bite mark and plenty of dirt adorning their captain.

"His eyes were white, though!" Luffy continued, raising one hand to point to his eyes as his other lay limply at his side, "He said he gets blind before he starts peeling. Sanji! Are your eyes like that before you peel the fruits?"

Their captain looked excited at the possibility of their chef sharing this awesome trait with snakes.

Sanji froze for an instant at Luffy's words. Sweat beaded on his neck in an instant, clammy and cold.

"No!" he said, lashing out, "I'm not a snake! Don't be stupid!"

"Waah! Sanji!" Luffy backed away, sad to take the scolding, "but it would be so cool!"

A third scream came into the mix as Chopper realized one of Luffy's arms wasn't moving.

"Ah! Luffy! He didn't bite you, did he?!'

Luffy dropped his defensive mood to trade it with one of confusion.

"Eh?" he looked at his limp arm, "Yeah, right on my arm." He tried to move his arm to show Chopper, but suddenly realized he couldn't, "Ah! I can't move my arm!"

"It's poison!" Chopper gasped, "What'll I do?!"

Then, with a sudden stroke of memory, Chopper knew what he should do. He took the arm of his startled captain and placed his mouth over two holes and started sucking out venom.

With perhaps the worst reaction Luffy could have had, he decided to run around and try his best to fling the helpful reindeer off.

"No!" he cried, "Don't eat me, sweet-meat! I'll eat you back!"

With a sudden chomp there was a set of teeth on Chopper's side as he squealed out in pain. Poison was spat onto the ground in a gasp as a foot with bandages around the ankle was suddenly on Luffy's head.

"I said not to be stupid!" the owner of the foot yelled, "He's helping with the poison!"

Luffy stood up straight to look at his crewmember, the furry fellow being released from his rubber jaw. He said only one word in response.

"Poison?"


End file.
